Starting Line is a fund for dreamers. Because we’re dreamers ourselves.

We speak your language. We live and breathe dreams. It’s all we know. We believe that every entrepreneur deserves an investor who is as obsessed about their business as the builder themself.

Here’s the vulnerable truth: this fund shouldn’t exist. There was no silver spoon. No anchor investor. No corporate sponsor.

It was willed into existence by something better: good people and karma. Mentors opened their pockets when they had nothing to gain. Our heroes gave up their precious time when there was no discernable ROI to doing so. And when we had zero clue how to seed this dream, the cosmic forces transformed a small 2013 bet into an unprecedented bitcoin bull run, providing the money we needed to get off the ground.

Starting Line invests in founders who are willing to take on substantial personal risks, out of fear of living a life of regret. That fear of wondering what life might have looked like if you’d just gone for it.

We invest in founders who build backwards: beginning with their vision of what the world should look like with their product, and methodically working backwards to build each small step along the way.

We invest in founders who are obsessive about their own products and have calculated reasoning for each decision they’ve made.

We invest in founders who aren’t afraid to say “I don’t know” and “I was wrong” - because humility is the hallmark of balance and self-awareness.

We demand these principles because they’re the values that enable this fund to exist. I personally drained my savings account because I believed that Chicago deserved better: a relatable, approachable, tolerant, diverse, and world class fund in the city of Chicago.

We've even taken the drastic steps of open-sourcing everything you will need to know about Starting Line, including the quarterly letters we send to our own investors: